Thoughts on football, books, and life in general

Tag Archives: Birmingham City F.C.

It feels as though the world is getting more partisan, with
people divided on various issues. I have nothing against people who strongly
support something or some team but the word ‘partisan’ has further connotations.
It is often used when people strongly support something without thinking
carefully about it.

When Birmingham City supporters sing Keep right on, we describe ourselves as ‘often partisan’ and I don’t
think many of us decided to support the Blues after a long and careful analysis
of the merits of different teams. I support them because my dad supported them
and he took me to games; he supported them because he was born in Sparkbrook.

I have already written on this blog about the sense of entering into a more splendid life that made me love going to football matches. I won’t repeat that except to say that what appeals to me most about watching football is being a participant in the performance, supporting my team. The sense of belonging and togetherness is what I treasure most. For others, I know that the quality of the football is more important.

What I value in football puts me at the opposite end of the spectrum to those who want to see the best players in their team. I’m thrilled to see Academy players stepping up to the first team; those who want to watch elite football are thrilled when their club buys expensive star players. I’ve just read an edited extract from The Club: How the Premier League Became the Richest, Most Disruptive Business in Sport, by Jonathan Clegg & Joshua Robinson. It describes how the owners of the top six Premier League clubs want a bigger share of the TV money so that they can compete with the big foreign clubs. To me that just seems greedy, but I am partisan.

The loss last Saturday felt cruel but, as we have come to expect from a team managed by Garry Monk, there was effort and commitment to applaud. There was also a great goal from Che Adams. This evening, as always, I will be hoping for a win. I won’t be going to Norwich and those that go that far on a cold winter night have my respect. Our travelling fans are incredible.

We live in a crazy world. Lionel Messi, the highest paid footballer last season, received $111,000,000. Does he deserve that much? More and more people in this country are relying on food banks. If you think that they deserve that, try watching I, Daniel Blake on BBC iPlayer and see if you change your mind.

Yesterday evening, I went to a performance of Commonism, at the Rep. It’s a conversation between two men, one British and one Norwegian, talking about the world today and imagining how the future could be better. At the end, they hand out copies of their manifesto. This suggests a maximum limit on the economic resources any one individual can possess and a universal basic income. I imagine that it would be a lot easier to get poor people to accept a basic income than to get rich people to limit what they own. The performance was thought provoking and I had much to think about as I walked back to my bus stop, past all the rough sleepers.

When I got back home, I saw the news about the latest Brexit squabble in Parliament. It seemed a far cry from the conversation I’d just listened to, about learning to disagree well. There was also news of Burton’s heavy defeat at Manchester City and the nightmare journey to get to Manchester experienced by some of their fans. The result was not that surprising when you consider the value of their squads. Sky reported that,

“Burton Albion’s squad value this season is around the £6m mark … Manchester City’s current squad is valued at just over £1bn, with their most expensive acquisition, Riyad Mahrez, joining the club last summer for £60m.”

In other words, one of Manchester City’s players cost 10
times more than Burton’s squad. That enormous inequality just doesn’t seem
right to me, with most of the TV money flooding into the Premier League. I can
understand why owners of clubs lower down the pyramid pay out too much in the
hope of getting promotion. Birmingham
City paid out too much; we are still waiting to find out what price we’ll have
to pay for that. We are not the only club with financial problems. The situation
feels more serious than just a few clubs breaking some rules; it feels as
though the whole system is broken.

Accounts

News of Birmingham City’s accounts broke on Friday, when they were filed at Companies House. It was not good news. The club lost £37,461,303 for the financial year. Read Daniel’s analysis on almajir.net if you want the details. This confirmed that I’d chosen the right picture for my mood indicator picture, with half indicating my happiness with the performance of manager and team and the other half showing my uncertainty over our financial situation.

West Ham

I went to the FA Cup game on Saturday and was glad I’d gone.
West Ham won the game, but our team put in a good performance and our fans were
incredible. As I get older and find it
more tiring to stand for 90 minutes, I treasure the away games because I don’t
know how many more I’ll be able to attend. I feel privileged to stand among
such loyal and loud supporters.

Stadium

The infamous bubbles

Managers

Blues fans at end of game

Newport County v Leicester City

I usually support Leicester when they play because I’m fond
of Demarai Gray but I also like underdogs. When I watched Newport play
Leicester on TV, my preference for underdogs was the strongest and I was
delighted when Newport won. There is
still some magic in the Cup.

Birmingham City’s goalless draw on Saturday was scrappy and
I came away feeling disappointed. Just
over 4 years ago, I can remember watching on TV as Blues played at Wolves. They
earned a magnificent 0-0 draw, which seemed wonderful because they had lost 0-8
at home in their previous game. Gary Rowett had been manager for less than a
week and had managed to turn a group of demoralised men into a team that could
defend.

Garry Monk has created a team that can defend and score
goals. The upside to this is that he’s got the fans onside, providing fantastic
support. The downside is that our
expectations have been raised and we find it harder to appreciate the value of
a no-score draw and 3 consecutive clean sheets. I also think that it’s good to be outside,
look up from our screens, talk to the people around us, and feel part of a community.
That feeling was reinforced by the Supporters Memorial. A list of Blues fans
who died in 2018 was shown on the big screen and read out at half time. Communities share their joys and their sorrows.

In Omar Bogle’s interview on BluesTV, he talked about scoring a goal against Jack Butland, a former Academy team mate of his. He said he talked with Jack after the game, but he didn’t talk about his goal. It sounded as though he had the ability that professional football players need to have, to regard opposing players as enemies during a game and as friends at other times.

I believe that fans also need to be able to do this. During games we want to see our team play well and be lucky; we want the opposition to play terribly and have the worst bad luck imaginable. But, at other times, we can sympathise with fans of other teams. When Frank Knight, a Blackpool fan, agreed to pay £20,000 to the Oyston family, owners of Blackpool, so that they wouldn’t take him to court for his rant against them on Facebook, fans from many other clubs made contributions to pay that, an example of the football community at its generous best.

I’m reading a book that discusses this: What we think about when we think about Football, by Simon Critchley,
a Professor of Philosophy who supports Liverpool. He says that “there is an inherent
rationality in football that permits both passionately held commitment to one’s
team at the same time as being able to tolerate, understand and indeed
encourage others’ deeply felt support for their teams.” It is not easy reading, but it is interesting
and has some great photos.

Critchley wrote that “a game can be a 90-minute anxiety
dream”. Wednesday’s game felt like 87 anxious
minutes until Bogle scored his brilliant goal and I stopped worrying that Stoke
might equalise. But I will remember it as a brilliant game, with two great goals,
a large crowd and an atmosphere that reminded me of how it felt when I stood
with my dad on the Railway end about 65 years ago.

I’m not writing about the 1-point gap between us and a nearby team but about the financial gap between teams. According to the transfermarkt website, Stoke fielded the Championship team that cost the most on the opening day of this season and Birmingham City were 16th in that table. But, as Johan Cruyff said, “Why couldn’t you beat a richer club. I’ve never seen a bag of money score a goal.”

It’s teams that win football games and Garry Monk has created a team from a collection of individuals. He’s also narrowed the gap between players and fans. Players have been involved in community projects that help to connect them to the people who support them. Three years ago, I wrote about a phrase, “naïve with power”, that expressed how rich and important people don’t understand ordinary people. That may be true of some in football but it’s not true of Garry Monk; he understands Blues fans and what they want. We want to see players who work hard and give 100% and that is what we are seeing when we go to games now. There is a togetherness between players and fans that reminds me of the atmosphere I remember from my childhood, in the 1950s.

There have been times when I’ve gone to Blues games out of a
sense of duty, feeling that my team was so bad it really needed my
support. Today, I am going because I
want to and am looking forward to it.

The FA Cup replay this evening is a big game for SolihullMoors and Blackpool. Some of the magic of the Cup may have departed for the bigger teams but it is still there in the early rounds when teams compete toget through to the third round and a chance to play a big club. TheMoors and Blackpool are competing for a chance to play Arsenal.

There’s also the money, of course. TV money, gate receipts
and prize money from the FA Cup are not important for Premier League clubs;
they get far more from playing in the League.
But FA Cup money can make a tremendous difference for clubs lower down
the pyramid. For example, an article
on the maths behind a jackpot FA Cup run reported:

“Warrington Town’s 2014-15 FA Cuprun made them around 70% more than their income for the whole of the previousseason. By far the biggest chunk of this came from their televised ties againstExeter and Gateshead.”

The same article reported that Arsenal’s winning cup run in
2013-14 made them £4.2 million but that was only 2% of their revenue for that
season. This helps to explain why some of the bigger clubs don’t take the Cup
too seriously and don’t use their best players in the early rounds.

Money is also the reason why only 10 of the 32 third-round
FA Cup games will start at 3 pm on Saturday, 5 January. The FA has
arranged a new £820m overseas TV contract and some of the games will be moved
to different times because of this. Malcolm Clarke, the chair of the Football
Supporters Federation, is quoted as
saying,

“The third round of the FACup on the first Saturday in January was always one of the great highlights ofthe season, and to have less than one third of the games kicking off at threeo’clock on Saturday definitely to some extent diminishes the magic of theday,”

The 12.30 kick-off for Birmingham’s game against West Ham
will also mean an early start for fans travelling down to London on the
day.

In the last game I watched, I saw my team lose but didn’t
see them stop making an effort. In the game at Blackburn, they showed their
character by the way they came back to get a draw. I believe that anything can
happen in the Cup and that we could beat West Ham. Moors fans will have similar feelings today
and will have been dreaming about watching Arsenal play in their stadium. I
hope their dreams and mine come true. There is still some magic in the FA Cup.

Solihull Moors FC has a great slogan: Moor than eleven. Every successful football team has more than eleven involved in that success. Yesterday evening, the Moors earned a replay against a team from higher in the pyramid. That was achieved by players, coaches, other staff and fans too. It was also one of the more exciting no-score draws I’ve watched. Continue reading →

Birmingham City reminds me of the opening line from A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens. It is the best of times on the pitch, the team is unbeaten in the last 11 games and has won the last 4. Off the pitch, it doesn’t seem so good. Continue reading →

It’s Saturday, Birmingham City are playing at home and I’ll be going to St Andrew’s once more. It will be the sixth home game and Blues still haven’t won there this season. As always, I’ll be hoping for a win this time. Continue reading →

On Heritage Open Day, Bournville Junior School was one of the places that was open and I was able to visit the school I attended as a child. I saw my name written in a book recording when I had started and left the school and I walked around looking at displays and posters. The poster on values listed the values that I could remember being taught by that school and by my parents. Continue reading →

I’m glad there’s a game to go to this evening. Watching a game is usually better than reading online articles that regurgitate what others have already written about what a mess the club is in and a possible 12-point deduction. Even watching our last home game against QPR, which was not very good, was better than reading some of the rubbish that gets circulated on social media. Continue reading →

Birmingham City players conceded two late goals in both games played on Saturday. It was disappointing but not devastating in the Under-23s game because Blues had already scored four goals and beat Colchester 4-2. Continue reading →

How fans react to the result of a game depends a lot on their expectations before it. I don’t think I was the only Birmingham City fan who felt fearful before our game with Swansea and that helped me to feel satisfied with the goalless draw. We played better, created more chances and should have won but we just couldn’t score. But it was the most entertaining goalless draw I’ve seen. Continue reading →